In the previous blog, we explored how we can get information about the origin of a manuscript just from looking at the script and layout. After finding out when and where a manuscript was written, we can then ask if there is anything that a manuscript can tell us about what happened to it after it was made. In the Middle Ages, much like today, books had lives after publication. Manuscripts passed from person to person – they were often valuable enough to be mentioned in wills. Some owners added their own notes in the margins of books [see image of F.12.15], while others filled excess leaves with their own additions. Many people wrote their own names in books (inscriptions) to show ownership. In historical bibliography terms, the record of origin of a book is called provenance.

Example of marginalia in OL [F.12.15]

Before any such additions or changes, it is important to note that books were not identical. Today, I can buy identical copies of Shakespeare’s works from Exeter to Edinburgh, but in the Middle Ages books were individually copied, each with their own minor variations and errors. Even after the introduction of printing, books were not sold as they are now, ready-bound in identical editions. Instead, early book sellers and stationers sold works in quires (sheets of paper stitched together into blocks of normally 4, 8, or 12 pages, sometimes more). These blocks of pages could be used as disposable pamphlets, or bound by the owner. This is why private libraries in stately homes often have all their contents bound in the same style. It is also why Queens’ College houses some books bound rather cheaply. Except for a brief period during the reign of Richard III, Queens’ has never been a rich college, and, unlike other colleges, could not afford to rebind all its older volumes in the 18th and 19th centuries as was the trend. This poverty has meant the survival of numerous rare bindings from the 16th and 17th centuries, making the Old Library collections an invaluable resource for people interested in the early book trade.

Examples of early bindings in Queens’ Old Library

Western manuscripts were made of parchment: writing material made from animal skin; the related ‘vellum’ refers exclusively to calfskin and is said to be better quality, while parchment may be from any animal. Today scholars prefer the wider terms parchment or animal membranae to refer to skin writing material. Early printed books often recycled pages of parchment from older manuscripts, which were seen as obsolete, in their bindings. These pages were stitched to the outside of the quires of text, before having wooden boards stuck onto them, which were covered in leather, providing a stiff, strong binding. Many of Queens’ books are bound in this way, leaving almost full pages of, for example, legal texts and biblical glosses visible inside the front cover.

A medieval pastedown found in a Queens’ OL binding [F.1.7]

When a book-buyer was really strapped for cash, they might not even be able to afford a binding such as that. In that case, the quires could be bound in a sheet of parchment without a covering, as a temporary measure until cash flow was a little better. Queens’ Old Library includes two small volumes which never received boards, and are, for a medievalist such as myself, enchanting examples of both earlier manuscripts in themselves, and what might happen to them in later life.

D.20.21 next to a Penguin paperback

D.20.54 next to a Penguin paperback

Both volumes are small, about the size of a modern A5 book, and slim. The first of the pair, D.20.54, is a work by Petrus on Euclidian Geometry, printed in Frankfurt in 1600, containing numerous woodcut illustrations.

Its binding sheet, however, dates to the late eleventh or early twelfth century, written in a late Caroline Minuscule script (or a Transitional script, depending on which palaeographer you talk to). This means that it is one of the earliest fragments in Queens’ OL collection, which has around 30 medieval manuscripts, dating as far back to the twelfth century. The page is a fragment of Caesar’s account of his war in modern-day France, de Bello Gallico, which was a staple of medieval libraries.

D.20.54 front inside pastedown

However, it was the binding of the second volume, D.20.21, Michelet’s Discours de Géographie, published in Paris in 1615 which grabbed my attention when I started to volunteer at the Old Library. First of all, I was interested because, unlike D.20.54, nobody had made any attempt to classify the binding page before – it was entirely my project. Secondly, I was interested that the page included notation I set to work trying to work out what it was.

Notation on D.20.21 back cover pastedown righthand column.

The hand is Littera Textualis from the twelfth or thirteenth century. The script has no cedillas (ę, medieval abbreviation for æ), so its earliest date of composition was c.1150, but it was not a fully developed Littera Textualis; there was not much compression between letter pairs such as æ or be, d and s were both written with a mix of bent and straight shafts and the first line of text was written above the top line of the page, so it could not date to much after 1250.

After making a transcription and rough translation, it becomes clear that there is a common theme to the text, which was divided by sections with notation. The fragment focused on St Peter, specifically his escape from captivity. After trawling of the internet to match parts of the transcription, I was able to work out that the fragment included parts of two sermons by the fifth century theologians, Chromatius, Bishop of Aquileia, and Pope Leo the Great, both written for the feast of St Peter in Chains (Petrus ad vincula), which was celebrated on the first of August.

The layout of these Patristic texts, interspersed with musical responses, suggest that the page was from a liturgical book. The most likely contender is a breviary, which provided the texts and music used in religious houses for praying the Hours – the services around which the monastic day was shaped. The English rite had developed separately from that commonly used on the continent, and were largely the product of developments at Salisbury in the eleventh century, so was known as the Sarum rite. Comparing the D.20.21 leaf to the published edition of the Sarum Breviary [Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. E.G. Duff, F. Procter and C. Wordsworth, 3 vols., (Cambridge, 1879-1886), III], I found that the chants did match for the feast of St Peter in Chains. What was confusing was that the texts did not. Leo’s sermon was in use, but it started later in relation to the chants in the published edition of the Sarum Breviary than in the D.20.21 fragment, while the extract from Chromatius was not included in the edition at all! This left me rather confused. It was time to consult a higher authority.

Giovanni Varelli, a historical musicologist from St John’s College in Cambridge, has worked extensively on early musical notation. Over a coffee in the UL, he talked to me about the type of musical notation found in D.20.21. It was not, as I had first thought, neumes, but square notation from the middle forty years of the thirteenth century, and originating in England. His assessment of the music, and mine of the text, gave us of a window of about twenty years in which the D.20.21 fragment had been written, and his knowledge confirmed that the fragment was of English origin. Finally, because of the number of manuscripts he has worked with, Giovanni was able to tell me that there was not one authoritative version of the breviary, even within a specific rite. Rather, the texts and chants often varied. In other words, the fact that the texts did not match up with the published edition did not mean that D.20.21 was not using the Sarum rite.

Closeup of notation on D.20.21 front cover pastedown.

The D.20.21 fragment was part of a breviary written somewhere in England between 1230 and 1250. This breviary provided the hours of the monastic day, for an organised religious community of monks, nuns or friars. It could even have come from the community of Carmelite Friars, established in Cambridge around 1250, who later owned the land between Queens’ and King’s Colleges (and after whom the northern wall of Queens’ Fellows garden is named).

A view of the Carmelite monastery wall in Queens’.

Later, probably as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, this breviary became obsolete. Maybe it was broken up, and odd leaves came into the possession of Queens’ College, or perhaps the whole volume belonged to Queens’. The inventory of the Carmelites’ possessions at the dissolution did not include any breviaries, but the priory seems to have been in decline at that point (with only two resident friars); it had already sold building materials and some of its stained-glass windows to Queens’ College, and could also have sold off parts of its library locally. The stained-glass survived the Reformation as a result of being moved to the Old Library, and are one of the very few remaining examples of pre-Reformation stained-glass anywhere in the United Kingdom. The glass panels include painted roundrels of individual, expressive Carmelite friars (most likely done from life).

A pre-Reformation medieval stained glass Carmelite friar watches over the Old Library.

Whether Queens’ acquired the whole breviary or only fragments thereof, it is most likely that its repurposing as a binding fragment for a work on geography was done by someone with links to the college; geography being more appropriate a topic in the post-Reformation university than the monastic hours. The low quality binding indicates the economic constraints of the owner. The work might have been gifted to the college by a scholar, or was purchased and bound by the impoverished college itself. With such a binding, it is definitely unlikely that the volume belonged to anyone rich or influential.

What is certain is that, by the seventeenth century, the breviary had been split up, and a page of it was used by the impoverished college to provide a temporary binding for a new book on geography, which was far more in line with the scholarly endeavours of the post-reformation university. Somehow, this flimsy binding survived the subsequent four centuries without being replaced. Half a millennium after it was last used as a liturgical text, the breviary fragment is still performing a useful function, as well as providing a project for someone who, like me, was in need of palaeography practice.

Written by Lindsey Askin, library volunteer and PhD student in Divinity.

Detail of miniature, MS 50

The Old Library is home to a beautiful Book of Hours from the Netherlands, dating to 1453, just two years before the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible. This manuscript, written on parchment, is very beautifully decorated with flourishing initials. The script in which the manuscript is written is known as Gothic bookhand. Our volume also contains seven pages of illuminated miniatures of the life of Christ. MS 50 is written in Middle Dutch. The Netherlands, along with France, were producing vast quantities of Book of Hours in the fifteenth century. The production of Books of Hours by the fifteenth century was no longer the sole provisio of monks and nuns, but was almost entirely taken over by trained scribes and artists in scriptoria, writing workshops.

A Book of Hours is a medieval devotional book. The cost and luxury of a Book of Hours is determined largely by the number of illuminated miniatures in it. Each Book of Hours was made bespoke, but most of them typically contained the following: a religious calendar, a gospel extract, the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Psalms of Degrees, the Penitential Psalms, a Litany of Saints, an Office for the Dead, and the Hours of the Cross. In terms of artistic expression, the Book of Hours was the highest medium for book illumination in the late Middle Ages. The most famous Book of Hours is the Belles Heures of Jean de France, the Duc de Berry, created around 1409 by the Limbourg brothers (The Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The Belles Heures contains ninety-four full-page miniatures, by comparison with the more modest seven miniatures in MS 50.

We know MS 50 dates from 1453 because of a colophon (the scribe’s sign-off, a scribal practice dating back to Ancient Babylon) on the final page. Like with Middle English, it’s much easier to understand if you try saying it out loud:

The red, violet, and blue initial ornamentation found all over the manuscript is an excellent example of ‘mask-group’ pen-flourishing, a style of ornamentation which originated in Amsterdam. Many of the ornaments contains flowers and faces, many of which green and grotesque.

The impressive miniatures are likely the work of the unknown Dutch illuminator known only as the Master of the Haarlem Bible (named after the Latin Bible in Haarlem’s Stadsbibliotheek, MS 187 C 13). The Master of the Haarlem Bible was active c. 1445-173, during which time he illuminated at least forty manuscripts. Most of these jobs were Books of Hours.

The seven miniatures in MS 50 are inserted single leaves. To facilitate the production of Books of Hours, medieval artists operated on a division of labour / assembly line basis: illuminators worked on illuminations while scribes worked on copying. In the case of our manuscript, the Book of Hours sans miniatures was produced in Amsterdam while the miniatures were done in Haarlem. This was a common process. The volume was written first, then sent to be ornamented with pen-flourishes, and finally it was given to the illuminator.

One of the seven miniatures, MS 50

Note the wood boards, MS 50

MS 50 came to Queens’ on April 23, 1930 via British artist and lawyer Joseph Yelverton Dawbarn, LLM, of Liverpool (b.1857-d.1943). He matriculated at Queens’ in Michaelmas 1874, was awarded LLM in 1881, and practised law at Lancaster Chancery Court. Dawbarn received the manuscript as a bequest of Thomas Craddock upon his death (Queens’, matric. 1851, b.1832-d.1930). Craddock’s bookplate survives on the manuscript with the inscription ‘bought 1846’. Before Craddock, MS 50 was also owned by John Maule of Inverkeilor (b.1706-d.1781), son of Henry Maule, styled Earl of Panmure.

The leather binding of MS 50

The binding on MS 50 is very fine and in good condition. It is brown leather over wooden boards (the wood is visible on the inside of the covers) and stamped in concentric bands, with portraits of contemporary figures, some of whom are in profile and others face-on. The binding contains the traces of two straps which would have locked the book shut for security, which have been carefully removed in conservation.

Detail of portraits in the binding, MS 50

Bibliography

Morgan, Nigel and Stella Panayotova, eds., A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges, Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge, Part One: The Frankish Kingdoms, Northern Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2009).

First published on 12 July 1493, the Liber Chronicarum (now termed by English speakers, the Nuremberg Chronicle) was one of the most popular books of the 15th century. A glance through its sizable leaves quickly reveals clues as to its timeless allure: intended as a universal history of the world from the beginning of time to the 1490s (and conceived from a specifically German perspective), this work is packed with information that is inextricably combined with lavish and detailed woodcut illustrations. If to 15th-century readers The Nuremberg Chronicle conveyed a popular subject via a vivid and innovative approach to book design, from our own perspective the work also offers unique insights into 15th-century life and thinking. Reformation vandalism, 500 years’ wear and tear, together with a botched 18th-century restoration had rendered this Queens’ College copy in urgent need of thorough conservation (one early reader scorched some of its pages by reading too close to a candle): this has all now been put right thanks to the painstaking and skilled intervention of the Cambridge Colleges Conservation Consortium.

The project to produce the Nuremberg Chronicle was instigated by the artist Michael Wolgemut (1434/37–1519), who with Wilhelm Pleydenwurif (c. 1450-94), conceived and executed its illustrations and engravings (one of Wolgemut’s apprentices had included the young Albrecht Durer but it is no longer thought that he worked on the Chronicle). To finance this expensive and hugely risky undertaking Wolgemut obtained the support of two wealthy patrons, Sebald Schreyer (1446-1520) and Sebastian Kamermaister(1446-1520), after which the famous Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger (ca.1440-1513), agreed to do the printing. The task of actually writing the work was assigned to the Nuremberg physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514). The diverse range of medieval and Renaissance sources used were drawn from authors Schedel studied as a student (at Leipzig and Padua), including Bede, Vincent of Beauvais, Martin of Tropau, Flavius Blondus, Bartolomeo Platina and Philippus de Bergamo. Like most incunabula (ie books printed before 1501), the work was published in Latin, although a German version was also produced a few months later, which was quickly followed by further pirated editions .

Schedel’s use of different graphic layouts to integrate text and image is all the more impressive if we remember that book production was still in its infancy. Images of biblical, mythological and historical events, family trees, views of towns and countries in Europe (including ‘Anglia’) and the Middle East all afford the 21st century reader a fascinating insight into the European world at that time (both physical and intellectual). Of particular historical importance are two double-page maps: a world map and a map of northern and central Europe. Based on Mela’s Cosmographia (1482), the former is one of only three 15th-century maps showing Portuguese knowledge of the Gulf of Guinea of about 1470. The map of Europe, by Hieronymus Münzer (1437-1508) after Nicolas Khyrpffs, is claimed to be the first modern map of the region to appear in print. We must, however, bring to the work an awareness of book design conventions of the day.

The Nuremberg Chronicle offers a prime example of the 15th-century practice of recycling the same image to depict more than one object (e.g. the same scene can represent a number of cities; and the same portrait, several different men). Thus of 1809 illustrations only 645 woodcuts were used, the remaining 1164 illustrations being repetitions of woodcuts used elsewhere in this same book.

Through this closely integrated interplay of text and images world history is vividly portrayed in parallel with the seven ages of man: Whilst the first five ages detail Old Testament events, Classical history and mythology, the sixth age takes the reader up to the reign of Maximilian I (who was Holy Roman Emperor when the work was published) . Political and ecclesiastical history is interspersed here with descriptions of cities and biographies of famous people. The seventh age is that of the Anti-Christ. The Last Judgment, is also treated very briefly, followed by a longer section, describing further places. (Poland and Russia).

Queens’ College’s Copy

It was not until 1760 that Queens’ Nurmeberg Chronicle came to the college. Although we know little of its existence prior to the 18th century, the book was certainly well read and used in the 16th century, as is indicated by the presence of several early annotations. Sadly these were obscured when the book was cropped during its 18th-century restoration: it seems that old annotations were valued less in the 18th century than they are today. This, though, is not the book’s only sign of use. As a work of religious history it contains numerous references to, and images of popes. In accordance with widespread practice in protestant lands during the Reformation period, many of these have been angrily defaced with black inc, and thus obscured, thereby providing the modern reader material evidence of the religious passions of the period. A small minority of images were removed at some point: the presence in the volume of a handwritten list of them suggests this occurred in the 18th century or before.

The book was bequeathed to Queens’ by John Pooley (d. 1757) of Boxted hall (a 14th century manor in Suffolk) who was admitted to Queens’ as a fellow commoner in 1694. The volume came to the College following his death around which time it appears to have been rebound in a somewhat slipshod manner (the boards were not square; the pages were not properly cropped). The volume has now been resewn and bound in a goatskin binding.

The Queens’ copy can be viewed durng the Queens’ Old Library Open Week on 25 Feb-1 March. There are several copies of this hugely important and influential book in Cambridge all of which will have their own provenance story and copy-specific features. To see the complete work online see the University Library’s digitised hand coloured copy.

Recent restoration of a Queens’ 16th-century law book (shelf mark: H.1.17) has brought to light an intriguing find. Hidden within its covers were 19 leaves from an even older, and incredibly rare edition of the 6th century Roman law text Corpus Juris Civilis [Body of Civil Law], printed by Jean du Pré in Paris, around 1495 (this was identified by our Old Library cataloguer, Paul Harcourt). Like many (or all?) early printed books there are numerous reaons why this particular volume is unique and of interest in its own right. Residing for the past 400 years on a bookcase devoted mainly to 16th-century law texts, H.1.17, like several of its near neighbours was bequeathed to Queens’ Library by the noted 16th-century Queens’ fellow, Thomas Smith (1513-1577). Although Smith attained high political office during the reigns of Edward VI (Secretary of State (1548-49)) and Elizabeth I (Principal Secretary of State (1572)), it is as one of England’s foremost humanist scholars that he is most remembered today. Moreover it is, in part, through his Queens’ bequest of over 70 Humanist and legal books that we can build a picture of Smith’s scholarly activities, both in terms of the texts that interested him and, through his annotations, how he read them (see brief details of the Smith bequest from the digitised 17th century Queens’ Library Donors’ Book) .

For the modern scholar Smith’s propensity to annotate, underline and even illustrate his books makes his collection of unique interest, not least because it suggests to us which books he actually read and found most important. Of the two complete law-related texts that comprise H.1.17 only one is annotated, a text by the Frenchman Joannes Millaeus, entitled Praxis criminis persequendi, published in Paris by Simonem Colinaeum in 1541 (this translates as The practice of prosecuting crime).

Smith underlines ‘murder’, ‘adultery’ and ‘Rape’ and draws a small church to highlight reference to places of worship

Illustrated by a series of 13 idealized woodcut illustrations, we can, perhaps, see why and when Smith acquired this textbook on crime. In 1540-2 following his Cambridge appointment as Regius Professor of Law (a post for which he was, as yet, unqualified), he had toured Europe to familiarise himself with Humanist legal scholarship. It seems likely that the text could have been picked up during his time in France.

Although to the modern reader gratuitously gruesome, these woodcuts afford a detailed insight into some grim realities of 16th-century life through their vivd depiction of a series of events: a street crime, the apprehension of a perpetrator, his ‘interrogation’ (i.e. torture –by water, by the ‘boot’) and final condemnation. We must remember that the 16th century holds a place in the history of criminology even more bloody and violent than that of the middle ages. An expanding criminal justice system encompassed increasing varieties of punishable offenses for which spectacular public punishments were meted out as a form of ‘deterrent theatre’.

Interestingly, it was during this era of Renaissance Humanism that Roman precepts of Justinian law were most fully absorbed into the European legal systems Smith was trying to find out about. It is ironic to discover, therefore, that the boards (or covers) of H.1.17 were manufactured out of 19 recycled leaves stuck together from the classic Roman text Corpus Iuris Civilis. Only two other copies of this edition and its extensive commentaries are known to exist (in New College Oxford and Nantes).

The style and appearence of the panelled ornamental roll-decorated border of the binding confirms that the volume was bound in the 16th century, and not after the time of Smith’s bequest. However, the fact that Smith’s annotations and doodles are in many cases cropped in order to bind the volume suggests that it was bound after Smith first aquired, read and wrote on the text.

Leaves from ‘Corpus Iuris Civilis’ found in the binding of H.1.17. Conservators from the Cambridge Colleges Conservation Consortium separated these and bound them together in a new volume

In an era when nothing was wasted it was common for binders to recycle leaves from earlier books by incorporating them into new bindings: Queens’ College Old Library is full of such examples. Whether Smith, the Humanist and bibliophile, was aware that the binding of his copy of Praxis criminis was made out of such a rare printing of Corpus Iuris Civilis, and whether he would have cared we will never know. The leaves from Corpus Iuris Civilis have now been bound into a separate volume so that modern-day scholars can examine them.